DEVELOPING A HOPE SCALE WITH A STORY- BASED APPROACH

View/Open

Date

Author

Metadata

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a tacit scale for 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students to measure their level of hope accurately by relieving social desirability concerns and testing pressure. Story Hope Scale was grounded on Snyder’s hope theory, and it was formatted as one story, including five questions and three choices for each question. Participants were recruited from non-special education, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students who agreed to participate in the study voluntarily with their parents’ consent. To test the reliability and validity of SHS, the present study correlated SHS with Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) scores, Children’s Epidemiological Studies- Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) scores, and teacher judgments for a total of 47 students in Harmony School of Science in Houston. Students also retook the SHS two weeks after the first administration. In order to examine whether SHS relieved social desirability and testing pressure, participants’ responses to a questionnaire were analyzed. Results of the study included that CHS, CES-DC and teacher judgments significantly correlated with Story Hope Scale (SHS) scores (p˂ .05), in the expected directions and analysis of participants’ responses revealed that SHS partially achieved the goal of avoiding social desirability responses and testing pressure. The conclusion was that SHS relieved testing pressure for most of the participants and social desirability concerns for a notable number of the students. Moreover, results supported the validity and high reliability (through test-retest) of SHS. Future research is required so as to test discriminant validity of SHS.